Faux pho

February 3, 2025 7:50 PM

The other day, I was at my friend's house and I was looking through all of her Hello Fresh recipe cards. She mentioned that she really liked the "Pho-Style Beef Noodle Soup", and I looked at it skeptically because almost nothing about it resembles pho. It comes with ramen noodles. The only thing about it that made it seem like pho at all was that it contains "pho stock concentrate" (whatever that is). But honestly, it still sounded like a tasty noodle soup, and she had two copies of the recipe card, so I took one.

I wasn't sure when I was going to make this, but just earlier this week, I saw a post in the "Aldi Aisle of Shame" Facebook group raving about their limited time offering "Pho Broth"! This is perfect for my fake pho. I told my Vietnamese friend about this and he just shook his head disapprovingly. Hey, not all of us have Vietnamese relatives that can make pho.

I didn't want to buy a bunch of stock concentrates for this, so I just used chicken msg. And I also had a single chicken thigh in the freezer so I used that instead of beef. So who knows what I'm even making at this point. But in order to stay somewhat true to this inauthentic recipe, I did use bok choy, mushrooms, and wheat noodles :P

What resulted was something that I guess kind of had the essence of pho? But it needed more flavor so I dumped in some fish sauce and extra lime at the end. To be fair to Aldi, I did essentially mix it with chicken broth, so I probably diluted some of the pho flavor. But if I don't think of it as pretending to be pho, it was a good meal. I don't think you can ever go wrong with a noodle soup.

Something that vaguely resembles pho

August 18, 2022 10:14 PM

Every once in a while I get a sudden craving for pho. I don't know how it hits me, but I just think about that pho smell and then I want some. I'm not about to spend 6 hours simmering some broth though, so I needed a shortcut. I remembered that Budget Bytes has a "faux pho" recipe, and it has decent reviews, so I decided to give it a try.

Her recipe uses chicken, and it just doesn't feel right to have chicken pho. I wanted beef. So I used beef broth instead of chicken broth and sliced beef instead of cooked chicken. I had a container of beef Better than Bouillon that expired earlier this year that I wanted to use up, and I bought the cheapest piece of beef I could find at Aldi, which was an "eye of round".

The soup is really simple. It's just broth and five spice. And so I mixed my beef broth with five spice and took a sip. It...felt like it was lacking something. I wasn't really sure what, but I ended up throwing in some bullhead barbecue sauce (hot pot sauce) and a little bit of hoisin, and, well, it didn't really taste like pho, but I guess it wasn't bad.

I ended up squeezing a lime slice into my bowl, and that made it taste a lot better. Still didn't really taste like pho, but it was some good noodle soup. Later that day, after I got back from a walk, I remember stepping into my living room and thinking "hey it vaguely smells like pho in here!"

I had some leftover broth and fixin's so I made more the next day, but I just went completely hot pot on it, and added cooked broccoli as well.

I really like noodle soup, and I want to give pho a try again. Maybe I'll actually use a recipe from an Asian person next time.